‘Some things just never change.  People just wanna kill each other, don’t they? I think it’s the only way for people to feel safe. It’s ironic. To feel safe, we have to hurt people. Even kill them.’ This is a comment from Hank MacLean (played by Kyle MacLachlan) in Fallout: Season 2, and it really effectively gets to the crux of the moral debates the new season deals with. It is based on the Fallout videogames by Bethesda Game Studios (I recently started playing Fallout 4 to fill the void finishing season 2 left me, the instalment of the game franchise most recommended for newcomers looking for a single-player experience, and it is a very good game). The series continues storylines from season one, introducing the new post-apocalyptic setting of New Vegas which has immense importance in the videogame franchise. Characters create new alliances, and pre-war decisions come to haunt the protagonists as we are given more pieces of the puzzle as to how the wasteland came to be – was Vault-Tec’s primary concern ever really the vaults? 

Similar to the first season, the character work is amazing, and for a video game adaptation it is thematically and structurally rich – whilst it takes a while to get to the narrative heights of season 2, once it sets the ball rolling there are delicious twists and turns throughout. It is still expertly sound tracked with a mixture of 1940s and ‘50s hits, which ironically contrasts the violent ruined world portrayed on screen, highlighting the dissonance between the sheltered vault dwellers and the weathered survivors in the wasteland. The show demonstrates this division best through the opposing world views of Lucy (Ella Purnell) and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins). For Lucy: ‘The Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated’, for the Ghoul ‘Thou shalt get side-tracked by bullshit every goddamn time’. Whilst the Ghoul has somewhat softened under Lucy’s influence in this season (and indeed Lucy has become spikier) this is only to a point, as his inability to let the past lie prevents him from seeing Lucy’s value to him for most of the season. 

The cast remained strong, with some interesting new additions (Macaulay Culkin?!?) as well as fan favourites like Maximus (Aaron Moten) and Lucy, The Snake Oil Salesman (Jon Daly) and of course the Ghoul’s companion Dogmeat! (CX4O4).  I found it particularly incredible the lengths show producer Johnathan Nolan (yes Christopher Nolan’s brother) would go to to use practical effects to heighten the show’s realism. Some of the Ghoul’s most terrifying adversaries, like the Deathclaws, are in fact full-scale practical puppets controlled by 5 puppeteers opposed to mere CGI – Walton Goggins’ acting is so authentic when he is faced with them because he is terrified of what he is being made to act with. It is this attention to detail and world-building that I love about this show – even down to period costuming and minute details, nothing is overlooked.

I have a habit of becoming obsessed with shows for a while after I finish them, or am forced to wait for the next instalment, and this show was definitely one of them. I wake up on Wednesdays and I get slightly sad that I won’t get a new episode. This show engages you both visually and morally – even now, despite him being known at the end of season 1 to be quite evil, I don’t know where I stand on Hank Maclean (and he does some pretty messed up stuff). It is this refusal to cast anyone as inherently good or evil, or indeed frame them to the viewer as such, that is so magnetic. I guess all that’s left now is to eagerly await the next season, which is both confirmed deep into the writing stage, and we believe, set in Colorado!

Rating: 5/5 

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